Full Moon Frolic

A multifaceted artist, writer, theater director, and art patron, Alice Pike Barney often made pastel impressions of characters for her theatrical ventures.

Moon Madness is a study for the character Luna from The Man in the Moon, a play written by Barney and performed at the Belasco Theater in Washington, D.C. (1909) and at the Theatre Mart in Hollywood, California (1929).

Between 1902 and 1903, Alice designed and built what was considered an anomaly in her time—a studio house intended to provide a focus for the arts and artists of Washington, D.C. Barney Studio House at Sheridan Circle was the site of rehearsals for the 1909 Man in the Moon production and for other theatrical evenings.

Her neighbor Isabel Anderson described one of Alice's evenings in her book, Presidents and Pies:

"Incense curled about us and blurred the weird sketches of wild-eyed people who peered down from the walls as we groped our way about, running into mirrors and each other.… In the center of a room in which we eventually found ourselves, several more or less undraped ladies with bare feet were posing and whirling rhythmically. It was all quite unusual, but highly diverting. At that time barefoot dancing, now so common, was in its early states, and this party caused considerable talk."

Source: Jean L. Kling. Alice Pike Barney: Her Life and Art (Washington, D.C. and London: National Museum of American Art in cooperation with Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994).

Pictured: Alice Pike Barney, 1857–1931, Moon Madness, 1928, pastel, 17 7/8 x 13 13/16 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Laura Dreyfus Barney and Natalie Clifford Barney in memory of their mother, Alice Pike Barney.